'Waits for her mother; very hard her lot;
For years now has she waited in her place.
"Where is her mother?" I can never trace
Somewhere beyond across "the no man's way."
Some day, perhaps,' she cried, with yearning face.
The tiny mite, tho' happy, could not play,
Except with little restless hands all day.

'Sometimes the shell come here right by,' she said.
'The other day, when I what you call wash,
A big boom quickly pass above my head,
And fall out in the field with a big crash.
But, oh, those children, they so very rash,
They know so little of the dreadful doom.
I come in time to save a fearful crash,
And catch them with the nose-cap in this room--
The nose-cap, unexhausted, from the boom.'

And then we start, inclined to say farewell.
We try to brighten up the little maid
Who sits alone, perhaps in faerie dell;
For she doth seem not in the least afraid.
She, smiling, takes the pennies which we lay
Within her hands, tho' distant is her smile;
And for a space she seemed with them to play,
But drops them ere we're scarcely gone, awhile
We wander back, half dumb, hard, thinking for a mile.

G.P. CUTTRISS and J.W. HOOD.